Steve Kubby on Equality

Bring Peace
To Our Rich, Melting-Pot Heritage

"The Negro's great stumbling block is not the
White Citizen's Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate
who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice who paternalistically
believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom."
-Martin Luther King, Jr. Letter from Birmingham jail, April 16, 1963

"I have a dream that my four little children
will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the
color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
-Martin Luther King, Jr. Speech at Civil Rights March on Washington,
August 28, 1963

Steve and Michele Kubby share many of the powerful, intelligent
principles of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. They especially embrace
the ideas he espoused leading up to the march, before politicians got
into the act. The two ideas expressed above fit exceptionally well at
any gathering of Libertarians.

Today's debate about the diversity of our country is one driven
by extremes. There are voices on the extreme right that want to build
a wall on our border to the south. To keep out people of color, they
want to erect a barrier that the communists in East Berlin would have
envied. Their idea of a melting pot is to assimilate everybody into a single,
lock-step culture. They believe people who won't assimilate must be kept
out. Meanwhile, voices on the extreme left want to bring about their
version of racial utopia by forcing everybody to live the way they see
fit. Forced busing, forced integration, and forced anti-hate measures
are the tools they use, usually getting bad results they never intended.

An entire industry has grown up around strife in America. Today's
"affirmative action" debate is just one example. While minority enrollments
dropped at many California colleges and universities after voters repealed
racial preferences, the proportion of minority students who completed
school and graduated went up. A fact for every side, one might suggest.
Restoring racial preferences won't solve the real problem.

The real problem is that the public education system fails our
most needy children. It fails to prepare poor and minority children for
higher learning. Racial preferences are a quick fix by politicians interested
in appearances. When minority college enrollments were artificially high,
nobody was supposed to suggest that public education failed these vulnerable
students. Now, the truth is painfully obvious.

You and I have to reject the extremes of left and right. We
have the power to make a big difference that will help people get along
better and live more prosperous lives, regardless of age, gender, race,
sexual orientation, or creed. It's time to look at each individual's
character. Any society that asks government to divide people into separate
groups, with separate laws, is headed for disaster. If we want a more
peaceful society, we must learn to judge people by the content of their
character. Not by some classification established by politicians.